sovereign law in Nature and society, just as it is false to contend that
this law is wholly inapplicable to human society. The real truth is that
even in human society the struggle for life is an eternal law which
grows progressively milder in its methods and more elevated in its
ideals. But operating concurrently with this we find a law, the
influence of which upon the social evolution constantly increases, the
law of solidarity or co-operation between living beings.

Even in animal societies mutual aid against the forces of Nature, or
against other animals is of constant occurrence, and this is carried
much further among human beings, even among savage tribes. One notes
this phenomenon especially in tribes which on account of the favorable
character of their environment, or because their subsistence is assured
and abundant, become of the industrial or peaceful type. The military or
warlike type which is unhappily predominant (on account of the
uncertainty and insufficiency of subsistence) among primitive mankind
and in reactionary phases of civilization, presents us with less
frequent examples of it. The industrial type constantly tends, moreover,
as Spencer has shown, to take the place of the warlike type.[18]

Confining ourselves to human society alone, we will say that, while in
the first stages of the social evolution the law of the struggle for
life takes precedence over the law of solidarity, with the growth within
the social organism of the division of labor which binds the various
parts of the social whole more closely together in inter-dependence, the
struggle for life grows milder and is metamorphosed, and the law of
co-operation or solidarity gains more and more both in efficiency and in
the range of its influence, and this is due to that fundamental reason
that Marx pointed out, and which constitutes his great scientific
discovery, the reason that in the one case the conditions of